{"id":1260,"date":"2013-03-05T06:02:09","date_gmt":"2013-03-05T11:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.graymanwrites.com\/blog\/?p=1260"},"modified":"2013-03-05T06:02:09","modified_gmt":"2013-03-05T11:02:09","slug":"the-evolution-of-launch-capability-3-decades-3-launches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/the-evolution-of-launch-capability-3-decades-3-launches\/","title":{"rendered":"The Evolution of Launch Capability: 3 Decades, 3 Launches"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s space history entry provides a glimpse of how space launch operations improved in the first 20 years of the space age.<\/p>\n

First, 55 years ago today — March 5, 1958 — we attempted to launch the Explorer 2<\/a> satellite from Cape Canaveral on a Jupiter C rocket. The vehicle lifted off without incident (which some in the industry might consider a launch success), but its upper stage failed and the satellite did not reach orbit.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(Explorer 2 launch. US Army image from Wikimedia Commons.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Ten years later, on March 5, 1968, the small scientific satellite SOLRAD 9<\/a> launched aboard a Scout vehicle from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. SOLRAD 9 was also known as Explorer 37, and it operated successfully until 1974.<\/p>\n

And then 10 years later still — on this date in 1978 — Landsat 3<\/a> launched atop a Delta rocket out of Vandenberg AFB, with the Oscar 8<\/a> amateur radio satellite along for the ride.<\/p>\n

So, on this date in space history we had three launch attempts, each a decade removed from another, from three different launch bases, resulting chronologically in a failed mission, a successful mission, and a successful multi-satellite mission. That seems like progress.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s space history entry provides a glimpse of how space launch operations improved in the first 20 years of the space age. First, 55 years ago today — March 5, 1958 — we attempted to launch the Explorer 2 satellite from Cape Canaveral on a Jupiter C rocket. The vehicle \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[26,11,17],"class_list":["post-1260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space","tag-launch","tag-space-history","tag-vandenberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1261,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1260\/revisions\/1261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}